Another Greek tragedy: Blast damages Athens court building

In both cases,the caller said the device had been strapped to a scooter outside the courthouse and gave the scooters registration number. The explosion occurred two minutes after the deadline, an officer at the Athens police headquarters said,adding that police bomb disposal experts had gathered the remnants of the device and the scooter and were examining them.

A local resident told the private television station Skai that he had seen two men dressed in police uniforms pull up near the court building on a motorcycle about 6:30 am. The witness said he greeted the men,who told him they were abandoning the scooter because it had engine problems. The witness added the pair then got into a white van parked nearby and were driven away by a third person.

The explosion damaged the facade of the court building as well as several cars,and also blew out windows in nearby apartment buildings.

Shortly before the bombing in Athens,a much smaller explosion occurred outside the Greek Embassy in Buenos Aires in the middle of the night.

The officer said it was too early to determine which of the several guerrilla organizations might have orchestrated the attack. He said another anonymous call made to Eleftherotypia nearly an hour after the explosion had warned that a second bomb would go off at a tax office in southern Athens. By midday there had been no other explosion.

There was no claim of responsibility for Thursdays attacks,which come a few weeks after parcel bombs were sent to several foreign embassies in Athens,causing one injury and international alarm after one device reached the Berlin office of the German chancellor,Angela Merkel.